


Before the Beginning: A Marauders Tale

by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Novel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-18
Updated: 2007-04-18
Packaged: 2019-01-19 03:16:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12401961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: Before the Boy who lived, there was another story. A story of right and wrong, friends that grow into families and families that would give anything for one another. It is a tale of betrayal, heartache, laughter, love, pain, excitment but most of all one of growing up. The story of Lily and the Marauders.





	1. Prolouge

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

  
Author's notes: 1  


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                                                    **Prologue**   

Several generations past, in a country known for tea time and knights who at one time sat around a table which was round, there lived a community of people beyond the wildest imagination of the average Muggle. It was a society widely overlooked by most people, as it is a generally recognized fact that Muggles usually only see what they want to see. 

On top of this, most Muggles have given up believing in anything odd and extraordinary once they leave childhood and thus the time in their lives which imagination and fascination with unexplainable occurrences are acceptable. 

By the time most Muggles became adults they only see their mundane ordinary lives, the daily grind, if you will, of the same old pattern day in and day out. Muggles don’t seem to mind this however because usually this is all that they now and therefore it becomes exciting in some strange way. 

Muggle children are usually the only members of this cultural group who see the lives of those which they will someday become, as they really are, intolerably boring and monotonous. Of course there are members of this social order who do not live like this, they go out every day not knowing what will happen, where they will end up, what crazy adventure they will become involved in. 

But for the point of this story, let us overlook these people. For as interesting as they are, they will serve no purpose in the tale in which we will shortly embark. Because these people as fascinating as they appear do not abhor to supernatural or mysterious beliefs. They are just as stubborn in their beliefs that life not being anymore magical then government funded scientific belief would allow. 

This was exactly how the other community of rather extraordinary individuals, whom lived amongst those Muggles, who saw and knew nothing, preferred it. For the other group of people knew the importance of secrecy, they knew that people were afraid of what they didn’t understand and what frightened them often led to prejudiced.

 For the most part these people did not wish to frighten anyone, a large number of them were as relatively peaceful and kind mannered as the average family living in 1950’s suburbia. Believe it or not they were very much like you and I, except that these people had one had one very large difference. 

On first look you might not see anything so diverse about them, after all they looked no different then the average human being. They spoke the same languages, celebrated the same holidays and so on and so forth. Yet they were very different. 

For their society was one of magic. The men and women within it were witches and wizards. The country was Great Britain and the year was 1958.

In a hospital in Ashtead, Surrey not far from the home which he shared with his wife and young daughter, a red haired man nervously paced up and down in the waiting room of the Hospital’s birthing clinic. Wringing his hands with anticipation he glanced up at the clock on the wall. He had been walking back and forth, the entire length of the room, for nearly two hours. 

Gritting his teeth nervously, as he often did when under extremely stressful circumstances he looked towards the double doors which he knew his pregnant wife was just behind. Suddenly he heard the unmistakable cry of an infant. 

The red haired man looked up at the double doors with anticipation, his bright green eyes excited. Lily Evans had been born. 

Weeks later in London inside a hospital hid well from the average prying eye, a tall man with messy dark hair and glasses held a newborn baby close to his chest as he looked down at the infant wrapped in a blue blanket with affection. 

Next to him a small woman with chestnut curls held off her face by a red ribbon looked at her husband with a mix of exhaustion and love. “Isn’t he beautiful?” sighed the wife. The man tore his eyes from the baby and leaned down to kiss his wife tenderly on the forehead. 

“He is more then beautiful Evelyn. He is perfect.” The wife, Evelyn, leaned back into the pillows propping her up upon her bed and happily shut her eyes, “a perfect little boy” she sighed. “Mary Alice will adore him” the man said as he softly stroked the cheek of the newborn boy. 

“Oh yes Harold” Evelyn said, “I imagine they will be best friends.” Harold Potter smiled at Evelyn and nodded his head, “Yes she will positively adore her new baby brother, James.” 

Several countries away a lone baby lay in her glass bed in the nursery. This hospital was very obviously one in which magic was apparent all around. Witches and Wizards gazed into the nursery all dressed in long flowing robes, wands tucked behind ears or sticking out from a pocket. 

MediWitches bustled about the large nursery checking on the infants, feeding, burping and paying attention to the new born babies. The little girl lay in her small bed, looking around her with interest. The child’s mother had insisted the child stay in the nursery since she cried all hours of the day and night and kept the baby girl’s mother awake. 

The Father of the baby had not even seen his six day old child yet. Of course he was an extremely busy man. On the other side of the glass several of the witches and wizards pointed at the sign on the baby girl’s glass crib. Every crib had one; it stated the name of the child. 

“Do you see the last name of that baby there?” asked one woman; “Yes, Yes Chiavatti isn’t it?” replied the man next to her. “I wonder don’t you? If it is the new daughter of Ruggerio Chiavatti, I heard his wife was having their daughter at this hospital.”

 It was to become the bane of the little girl’s existence, her famous father. For years she would be the daughter of Ruggerio Chiavatti and never simply Arabella, which was all she ever really wanted to be. 

Back in Great Britain still later on that same year a noticeably young, good looking blonde couple walked behind a tram as they meandered through a park near their home in Cambridge. 

The young man had wrapped one of his arms around the thin waist of his wife as he pulled her toward him and kissed her on the cheek. The girl for she couldn’t have been a day over twenty giggled and looked up at the man with appreciation.

 Inside the pram a baby gurgled happily. The women leaned over the pram and tickled the baby’s stomach, to which the infant shrieked gleefully. The man laughed as he rubbed his wife’s back and watched the two members of his little family with contentment. “Look at little Remus smile” he whispered into his glowing wife’s ear. 

In a large and well known house in Northern London a baby lay quietly in a crib in an elaborate nursery. The infant was all alone and even if it had cried for attention no one would have come to comfort him. 

The baby’s father was deep within his study several floors below in a meeting with several important political advisors, the baby’s mother was having tea at the house of a friend and would not likely be back for hours.

 The House Elf’s were all busy, preparing for the couple’s dinner party which was set to be held that evening for a large handful of the high society couple’s friends. 

The child was all alone, but by now the baby was used to it. Sirius Black learned from an early age that being alone was far better then being surrounded by his family.

In Northern England a little, stout women dressed in brown robes and an apron held a baby as she rocked back and forth in an old rickety rocking chair. Softly she sung a tune into the infant’s ear so only the baby could hear. 

It was a touching moment between son and mother. Of course that was the only type of moments the two had, the small baby boy’s father had left his wife shortly after learning she was pregnant. 

It had been horrible at first but now her baby boy was her pride and joy. Nothing would ever stop her from being the best mother that she could be to her son. “I will be the best mother in the world to you Peter Pettigrew, for you are my world” the woman thought to herself. 

So begins our tale, of friendship, love, loyalty, betrayal, truth, darkness and sacrifice. 

Authors Note- Just for the record I dont own any of this. At all. It belongs to JK Rowling, Bloomsbury, Scholastic, WB and so on and so fourth. 


	2. All About the Potters

Marigold Alameda Potter, though she preferred to be called Mary Alice for all general purposes and made sure everyone know this, quite inexplicitly, no matter whom they happened to be ;( Minister of Magic or Albus Dumbledore included) was born on October 11th 1957. 

She was the first child of one of the most well respected young couples in Wizarding Great Britain. Her father, Harold Potter was moving quickly up through the ranks of the Ministry of Magic’s Auror Department.

 In fact he was slated to become the next Defense Department Head by many high ranking officials. Evelyn Potter had spent her time up until Mary Alice’s birth working as a writer for Witch Weekly magazine. 

She had intended to continue doing this after her daughter was born but had not realized how much work a baby was actually going to be. Despite what all of her friends who had already become mother’s told her. Despite all the parenting advice books she read. Despite what her own mother told her. 

If there was one obvious quality that Mary Alice inherited from her mother it was stubbornness. It was almost humorous once one realized the level of stubbornness that was present in each of the Potter woman, seeing as how easygoing the Potter men were.

 Perhaps it was simply to make up for how bull headed Evelyn and Mary Alice were, and later on Arabella but she wasn’t part of the family in the beginning, so she cant be included in the initial analysis. For if Arabella was included then Sirius would have to be included as well and that would just throw everything off seeing as Sirius was easily just as stubborn, if not more so, then any of the three women. 

So begins our tale, of friendship, love, loyalty, betrayal, truth, darkness and sacrifice. Considering as he was quite obviously male it does nothing for the sake of the argument. But where was I? Oh yes Mary Alice. 

She was a most troublesome child, colicky, never content, always pouting. In fact Evelyn and Harold began to worry that there was something wrong with their daughter as she grew from infant to toddler with much the same moodiness. 

Physically the child was quite normal, she had pretty hazel eyes with dark lashes, brown hair, four limbs and everything else seemed to be in the right places, ears, nose, eyes and whatever else have you. But for some reason she was off. 

Evelyn even started talking about taking her to some sort of specialist after a particularly traumatic event that ensued when Evelyn’s mother visited the Potter family and Mary Alice refused to talk to her Grandmother, who eventually scolded Mary Alice. 

The young girl was not a fan of being scolded and promptly bit her Grandmother in the leg. Evelyn had been horrified; her Mother had been hollering something about, “Why in her right mind would she have married that Harold Potter? Of course he would produce demonic offspring. 

There had never been any question of that!” For his part Harold Potter had found the whole episode to be supremely hilarious and years later continued to retell the story to any that would listen, still laughing just as hard as he did when his young daughter had token a chunk out of the old ladies leg. 

“That’s when I knew she was really Daddy’s little girl,” he always said, “Always watching out for me she is.” It was after that very incident that Harold stopped worrying about his daughter all together. Evelyn yelled at him, threw fits, argued but it was no use, Harold was convinced that his daughter was perfectly fine. 

“Going around biting relatives just isn’t normal behavior Harold!” she had tried reasoning, but her husband would hear none of it. For some reason, Heavens knows why Harold Potter actually did seem to know what he was talking about in this case, “For once” Evelyn had said in a huff. 

Because shortly after Mary Alice’s second birthday, October 22nd 1959 if you want to be exact about it, the Potter’s had their second child. 

Evelyn had told Harold in no explicit terms something along the lines of, if this one acts anything like the first kid I am going to live in Spain until they are both done with the terrible twos, well it was something along those lines her actual words were slightly too R rated for this story, and that’s really saying something as Evelyn Potter was not a R rated women, to say the least. 

Of course all that can be forgiven when one realizes that Evelyn was in labor with her second child for close to seventeen hours, and at the time of this rather colorful speech was nearing the sixteenth hour of child labor. But at the end of those seventeen hours, Harold and Evelyn Potter welcomed there son James Harold Potter into the world. 

Everything changed when James was born, but the most obvious was Mary Alice. She quite honestly became a different girl. You would think that a two year old is a two year old; they pretty much go through each day as they did the day before not really aware of their surroundings.

 But the day the Potter’s brought James home from the hospital, it was as if Mary Alice found her calling. She was supposed to be James’ best friend. 

While he was an infant Mary Alice hardly ever left his room, it was behavior that would eventually change drastically as the two aged and both would be embarrassed by its being mentioned once they reached school age. 

But at the time it was unbelievably sweet, she guarded his crib and no one sans Evelyn, Harold and Harold’s parents got to come close. To say the least Evelyn’s mother didn’t get to spend much time with her infant Grandson. Not that Harold minded to say the least.

 As Mary Alice and James grew they became nothing less then the best of best friends. Growing up in the Wizarding world before one enters school can be terribly lonely. But this proved to be of little matter for either of the Potter children. 

The two of them amused themselves for hours, running amuck inside, outside, causing trouble, horrifying the house elves and doing whatever it is that young children liked to do. A very obvious sort of alliance developed between the two, it drove Evelyn crazy to say the least. 

Neither would ever let the other take the fall for anything, no matter if they had acted single handedly or not. If Evelyn was reprimanding Mary Alice for breaking a vase or something of the sort, James would immediately claim that he had helped to do it and vice a versa. 

After a while Evelyn quit punishing her children, she could never get a straight story out of either one and it seemed pointless to punish anyone who seemed to accept punishment as some sort of badge of glory. This is exactly how both young Potter’s thought of the reprimands and punishments their mother handed out. 

To be fair though both children knew better then to speak when Harold Potter was upset, for as much trouble as they caused their mother; to upset their father was an entirely different game. Harold Potter was normally cheerful, calm and rarely raised his voice.

 After all being a top Auror tended to make one appreciate the calm of normal life a bit more, which was exactly what Harold did. When something interrupted the tranquility of his life outside work he was downright scary. Thankfully he rarely became upset. 

Evelyn Potter surely would have gone mad if Mary Alice and James spent all their time together though, so early on she enlisted the help of several of her friends who had children around Mary Alice and James age, as was custom in the Wizarding world. 

Playmates tended to be the children of your parents friends, and seeing as Harold and Evelyn knew the majority of Wizarding families in Britain Mary Alice and James were rarely without playmates, “Thank god” Evelyn said.

 Evelyn had been best friends with Lucretia Black now Prewett all through her days at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, she and her husband Ignatius were frequents guests at the Potter’s home, Rose Hill Manor. They more often then not brought their two sons Fabian who was four years older then Mary Alice and Gideon who was two years older then Mary Alice. 

The four would run around playing Quidditch without brooms, seeing as Evelyn said, no child of hers was going to be up on a broomstick until they were at least nine, much to Harold’s disappointment. In the winter they often had snow ball fights. But at the end it was always Mary Alice and James against Gideon and Fabian, or whatever playmates there parents drug up for them. 

James positively worshipped the ground Mary Alice walked on, that would never change in a way. Mary Alice found an ally and an eager student in her younger brother. 

She taught him about Quidditch, the rules, the strategies, the leagues, the teams. In fact the reason his sister taught him about it might have had a slight effect on the obsession that James Potter would forever have when it came to that particular sport. 

Mary Alice taught James about pranks, much to Evelyn Potter’s displeasure and Harold Potter’s amusement. It was a knowledge that James Potter would one day put to good use.

 In fact in the years to come the teachers of Hogwarts really only had one, Mary Alice Potter to thank for instilling the knowledge of how to single handedly reek havoc on a castle that had never seen as much chaos in its thousands of years in existence, as it did thanks to four boys in the years to come. 

For nine years Mary Alice and James spent practically every waking minute together. They were the best kind of brother and sister, they got along perfectly. Despite each having strong opinions instilled by two excellent parents, they always seemed to agree on everything. 

Of course it probably helped that they were very similar in the majority of respects, both would remain that way until years later when it was impossible to do so. But that is later to come. 

When Mary Alice got her letter of acceptance to Hogwarts in the summer of 1968, she was nothing if not completely ecstatic. Her entire life she had heard tales of House Rivalries, friendships that would last a lifetime, secret passages, unimaginable feasts, magical creatures, unbelievable Quidditch matches…her small mind worked overtime planning out all that she would achieve in her time there.

 James of course, went right along with her, helping her dream of how she would lead her house team to the Quidditch Cup and then single handedly go on to pilot her house to wining the House Cup. 

What house did she dream of? Well Gryffindor of course. No Potter was ever in another house, well except for some Great Uncle of Hugh who was in Hufflepuff, but neither James nor Mary Alice knew a thing about him. 

Evelyn Potter, for her credit, had been in Ravenclaw, but Harold had teasingly told the children once, “I can overlook that. After all she wasn’t a Potter yet.” Evelyn and hit him in the arm and told her children, “Ravenclaw is perfectly respectable thank you very much, as is any house.

” Both children knew that Gryffindor was where the fun was however, so were more then determined to be placed into that house; opposed to any other. James never really registered that his sister going away to Hogwarts, meant she would be leaving him. In fact it never really sank in until he was leaving Kings Cross Station after seeing Mary Alice on to the Hogwarts Express on September 1st.

 She had hugged him and told him to make Mother’s life difficult for her, something Evelyn Potter had rolled her eyes at. Mary Alice had promised to write him and tell him about all of her adventures and that she couldn’t wait to see him at Christmas time.

 To be quite honest to a nine year old boy whose entire world revolved around him older sister, realizing that he would be without her from now on for nearly seven months out of the year was completely heart wrenching. But he took his cues from Mary Alice and never shed a tear.

 After all he couldn’t ever seen Mary Alice cry in his memory, true Evelyn often said that she cried so much as a baby her tear ducts probably didn’t work properly, but that was beyond James realm of knowledge. 

So it was from an early age that he resolved to be as tough as his big sister. He decided somewhere in his young mind that the better he became at all the things they did together by the time he next saw her, the more impressed Mary Alice would be. 

As a young boy that was what James Potter wanted most, to impress his big sister. Interestingly enough that would be what he spent most of his life attempting to do, impress girls that is. 

So as soon as the Potter family minus Mary Alice got him from King’s Cross Station on September 1st 1968, James Potter started practicing Quidditch. He practiced day in and day out for the next two years. 

He taught himself tricks, maneuvers, stunts, things most people had never seen or heard of. That became what he was known for one day after he two began school, but at the time it was only a little boy passing the time without his best friend. 

He missed her terribly at Quidditch being both of their first loves seemed to make her that much closer to her. Little did he know that Mary Alice sat in a compartment on the Hogwarts Express by herself that day and cried because she missed her little brother. 

Well until she met Alice Whitman and Emmeline Vance who would interestingly enough become her best friends at school. But really that is for another chapter. 

Authors Note- So I have several chapters finished and I am just posting them initially...what do you think????


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